


just like the present

by cryptidgay



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: 12x100, Constrained Writing, Developing Relationship, F/F, Season 1-10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29394564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidgay/pseuds/cryptidgay
Summary: By season four neither of them is one for talking. Jessica gives Hollywood grins to every camera flash, but sits alone at fundraising galas. Reporters don’t bother Nagomi after enough glares and taps of chitin on the nearest hard surface.When they finally play each other, it’s nine games in a row, and it’s wonderful or it’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen, depending on which side of the Styx you’re from.(12 scenes, 100 words each, following two parallel lines as they finally meet.)
Relationships: Jessica Telephone/Nagomi McDaniel
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	just like the present

**Author's Note:**

> format borrowed from lewis attilio, who writes wonderful baseball fiction @ [pigeonize on medium.](https://pigeonize.medium.com/) title from blood bank by the mountain goats.

**1.**

It starts like this: they narrowly miss each other in Hades, and keep missing each other to the point that it could be a joke if it were funny. They’re two speeding trains narrowly avoiding a front-page headline disaster.

The universe knows a thing or two about calamity: long-dead souls clogging the gutters of Hades, corpse of god sitting pretty in the Baltimore harbor, cracked drywall of peanut shells raining down on the field in Philly, in Baltimore, in Kansas, in every rotting nightmare either of them will have for the rest of their lives.

So. It starts like this:

**2.**

By season four neither of them is one for talking. Jessica gives Hollywood grins to every camera flash, but sits alone at fundraising galas. Reporters don’t bother Nagomi after enough glares and taps of chitin on the nearest hard surface.

When they finally play each other, it’s nine games in a row, and it’s wonderful or it’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen, depending on which side of the Styx you’re from.

“Good game,” Jess says to Nagomi and only to Nagomi. The other Crabs have fled to the locker room.

“Yeah,” Nagomi mumbles, eyes on the sun above. "Sure."

**3.**

Nagomi’s dive into the harbor is the stuff of legend.

In the stories, Nagomi wades in the Chesapeake until it’s to her neck, then above her head. Then she’s miles below and breathing in the water. No fish dare approach her.

“Wanted to belong here,” Nagomi says when Jess asks, postgame party drunkenness making curiosity tumble out. Nagomi’s clawed arm, pomegranate-red, hangs down. It is a part of her, but it doesn’t quite fit. Yet.

Jess thinks of Achilles, and wonders if Nagomi had anyone holding her from the surface, gripping her ankle on the pier, praying for lungs unflooded.

**4.**

They get thirty games across two seasons. It’s not enough, but they make do. They may even be friends, by the last one.

“Six stars?” Jess leans beside the locker room door in her old-new Pies uniform, recycled from two seasons prior.

“I’m not interested in stealing your crown.” 

Nagomi’s voice is soft. Jess strains to hear it over the screech of feedback.

“I know,” Jess says. Her smile’s lopsided — not the one on the cover of Splorts Weekly. Something new. Nagomi tries to remember if she’s seen it before, comes up short. “But I might let you borrow it.”

**5.**

The Crabs make the playoffs and Nagomi leaves the celebration at Loser’s townhouse early. The lightrail is deserted, and Nagomi is homesick for the city right outside the window, and she has been in Baltimore too long to believe she’ll stay come election time.

She dials Jess’ number without wondering how she knows it.

“Congratulations, McDaniel.” 

“Sorry about the Pies.”

“I wouldn’t want to ascend so soon, anyway,” Jess says. Like a triple win is inevitable if only the Pies make the finals. Like any of them know what ascension means yet.

Nagomi snorts a laugh into the cold air.

**6.**

The Pies never come to Breckenridge, but Jess does.

“You have a game tomorrow,” Nagomi says. Squints like she’s trying to see through Jess, to the dull painting in the dull hallway of her dull apartment.

Nagomi’s arm — flesh, not claw — is bandaged from the shoulder to the elbow, and Jess is gentle as she brushes her fingers down it, hardly touching at all. “Saw the news,” she explains. “Wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“It’s not the first time anyone’s been blooddrained,” Nagomi says.

“First time it’s been you, though.”

Nagomi runs out of words.

**7.**

The irony is: the Tigers, Pies, Crabs, and Jazz Hands all make postseason. A full house, if not for the Fridays’ absence.

Neither of them are there.

Jess had called Nagomi at five-minutes-till, eyes locked on their names unwavering on the idolboard.

“Something’s going to happen.”

“It might kill us,” Nagomi says. Jess has never heard her voice waver before. It’s like an earthquake. It leaves her head spinning.

If she’s dying, she should call Seb, but the brother she’d want to say goodbye to isn’t where she can reach anymore.

She doesn’t hang up until the line goes dead.

**8.**

Jess leaves voicemails, short and bittersweet.

“I’m out.”

“I miss you.”

“Remember the necromancy rumors? They actually did it. Hotdogfingers is back.”

“I hope it’s less dark in your shell than it was in mine. The Crabs always put it in a sunny spot on the field, when it’s not an eclipse.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck. Shit. God. I —”

“Sebastian’s gone. Fucking Hotdogfingers  _ killed him. _ It’s been four fucking days — I didn’t get to see him, I didn’t —”

“I don’t want to be here. I envy you, a little.”

_ This voicemail box is full. _

“It’s happening again. Thank god.”

**9.**

Nagomi’s stomach churns with bitter, terrible jealousy when Jess steps from her cracked shell onto the field.

Dreamy’s hand is on her claw, the pity in Loser’s eyes heavy on her shoulders. Weight of the world. He doesn’t understand because he can’t. When Nagomi just barely has the self-restraint not to dart onto the field, it is not because she wants to save the players shelled as she was, but to join them.

The weight of her team around her roots her in place. Instead she watches as Jess hits home run after home run, magazine-cover grinning all the while.

**10.**

Their one game of season ten lasts all of five minutes, and neither of them make it to bat a single time.

A year in Baltimore has prepared Nagomi for this moment: staring at Jess across the field, forcing inaction even as Quitter sends the Crabs crumpling to the ground. The real game, the main event, is a blur. Jess’ shell comes back up around her before Nagomi’s aching legs can sprint back onto the field — there’s a manic moment of wondering if she could throw herself so close the shell would cover them both, and Jess is gone.

**11.**

Nagomi should be gone, too.

The Crabs ascend and Nagomi does not think to check the news for leguminous meteorites making craters of cornfields, so it’s a surprise when the knock on her door is neither Dreamy nor Bullock.

“Jessica,” she says softly. It’s been a long time since Jess’ name has sounded like anything but a prayer in her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Jess says. Might be for any number of things, but Nagomi does not care to puzzle them out; every sound is too much, so she buries her face in Jess’ shoulder & refuses to hear anything at all.

**12.**

The sun rises and Jess is still there under the haphazard blanket Loser’d knitted Nagomi half a lifetime ago. Grief mingles with some winged beast taking root in Nagomi’s ribcage, right where carapace mixes with bone.

“Oh,” she says. Soft. Jess’ eyes open like she was awake & waiting.

Later: “You shouldn’t have been alone,” Nagomi says, because she can’t say she’d wanted to be by Jess’ side. It would be cruel.

Jess doe-eyed, lopsided smile no longer at home on her face but trying: “I’m not, now, right?”

Nagomi’s quiet. Jess’ hand lands on her claw. “And neither are you.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **(Bonus:)**  
>  The new season hangs over them like a threat, the temporary safety of the offseason cast into shadow by the vast unknowns ahead and the tragedy behind. On all sides, they’re walled in by unluckiness.
> 
> But: a month after Jess lands on Nagomi’s doorstep, Nagomi’s lips meet hers for the first time, and for a moment, the clouds disappear. Nothing but sunshine.
> 
> Nagomi isn’t sure Baltimore is home yet, but showing Jess around, it might be. Jess returns the favor, tours them around Dallas, hometown stories spilling out as they go.
> 
> No wreckage, no disasters; just parallel lines finally entwining.
> 
> ———
> 
> thanks so much for reading! find me on tumblr @ rogueumpire, or in the crabitat discord server. bonus section bc it's 2am and i don't know how to count and accidentally wrote too much, whoops. leave a comment if you enjoyed it, it'll make my day!


End file.
